Having committed Richmond to a groundbreaking project aimed at rectifying gender imbalance in sporting hierarchies, Tigers boss Brendon Gale says there is no reason why the next AFL chief executive couldn’t be female.

Mooted by some as a potential candidate for the top AFL job himself – a topic Gale would not elaborate on – the Richmond chief said superior management skills and leadership qualities were the most important traits, and added that clearly neither were gender specific.

“What does that require, what does it mean to be an outstanding leader or manager? Well, it doesn’t mean you have to be a bloke,” Gale said.

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“At the AFL, it’s less about the subject matter – and when I talk about subject matter, I mean footy. You don’t need to be a subject-matter expert, you need to be an outstanding leader.

“I’m also convinced a woman can be a CEO of a club. In my role, I think it helps to have a grasp of the subject matter [football] because you’re closer to it and it’s the biggest part of our business and it’s the biggest organisational risk. But I think about where you spend the most of your time, and it’s about giving people a sense of where we’re trying to take the club, it’s about managing people and systems and resources, it’s about communicating, it’s not about going out and having a kick.”

In a three-year project backed and jointly funded by the Australian Sports Commission and the AFL, as reported today by Fairfax Media, Richmond has committed to affirmative action to improve the representation of women in positions of leadership. Doctor Pippa Grange, formerly of the AFL Players Association, is directing the longitudinal study with sport and social justice expert Paul Oliver.

Through extensive interviews and research, Dr Grange and Oliver will table recommendations by the middle of this year aimed at shifting the barriers – both real and perceived – to women ascending to positions of influence in sport. Richmond will effectively be a test environment for the project from next year when recommended “interventions” will be carried out.

Outgoing AFL boss Andrew Demetriou said women are under-represented in the AFL.

“We are getting better, but we’re miles away from where we must be, with more women in senior roles in the AFL and in clubs,” he said.

“We have women on the commission, we have a woman as a club president and look forward to the next step — a CEO at club level and more women on the AFL executive.”

There is one female on the AFL’s 11-member executive team, manager of people, customer and community, Dorothy Hisgrove. She was appointed last year.

The AFL’s first female commissioner, businesswoman Sam Mostyn, who joined the competition’s most influential group of decision makers in 2005, has long advocated for women’s promotion from what she has referred to as traditionally “pink ghetto” areas including events and communications where females in football have tended to get stuck.

Last June, Mostyn challenged the AFL’s powerbrokers to be better champions of female talent to accelerate the promotion of women. Mostyn said women in football needed more than mentors to rise, she said they needed committed advocates. She also forecast that it would not be long before the first female became a club CEO. That milestone occurred in the NRL last May after Raelene Castle’s appointment of CEO at Canterbury.

With Demetriou having announced his resignation, an executive recruitment process is underway to find a replacement. The AFL Commission is overseeing the exercise and Demetriou has said he envisages remaining CEO until the end of the season.